J. W. B. Barns
British Egyptologist, papyrologist, Anglican priest, and academic
John Wintour Baldwin Barns (12 May 1912 – 23 February 1974) was a British Egyptologist, papyrologist, Anglican priest, and academic. From 1965 to 1974, he was Professor of Egyptology at the University of Oxford.
Early life and education
Barns was born on 12 May 1912 in Bristol, England. Having won a scholarship, he was educated at Fairfield School, then a private school on Bristol. Though he had an interest in Egyptology from an early age, since the discover of Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922, his father encouraged him to study classics. He taught himself Ancient Greek because it was not a subject available at his school.
At the age of 17, Barns matriculated into the University of Bristol to study classics. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in 1932. He then matriculated into Corpus Christi College, Oxford to study Literae Humaniores. He was elected to a classical scholarship in 1933.
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This entry incorporates text from “J. W. B. Barns” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.